Present a seminar by
Candidate for UBC Faculty of Science CRC Tier 1 Position
in Data Science
Dr. Michel Dumontier
Associate Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics), Stanford University
entitled:
Semantic approaches for biomedical knowledge discovery
With its focus on investigating the basis for the sustained existence of living systems, modern biology has always been a fertile,
if not challenging, domain for knowledge discovery. Despite the existence of millions of scientific articles, thousands of
databases, and hundreds of ontologies, our ability to efficiently reuse our collective knowledge is hampered by incompatible
formats, partial and overlapping standards, and heterogeneous data access interfaces. In this talk, I will discuss our efforts to use
web standards to build and uniformly expose a rich network of Linked Data and Services, and to use these to i) test biomedical
hypotheses concerning drug cardiotoxicity, ii) uncover disease pathways, and iii) identify candidate drugs for repositioning. As
the amount of linked open data increases and the portfolio of semantic technologies continues to mature, researchers worldwide
will be strategically poised to pursue increasingly sophisticated knowledge discovery to understand human health and disease.
Bio: Dr. Michel Dumontier is an Associate Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics) at Stanford University. He obtained
his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Toronto in 2004, and subsequently joined the Department of Biology at Carleton
University, in Ottawa. His research aims to develop methods to integrate, mine, and make sense of large, complex, and
heterogeneous biomedical data. His research interests include (1) finding novel therapeutics for rare and complex diseases, (2)
elucidating the mechanism of drug-induced side-effects, and (3) optimizing multi-drug therapies. Dr. Dumontier is the Stanford
University Advisory Committee Representative for the World Wide Web Consortium, the co-Chair for the Semantic Web for
Health Care and the Life Sciences Interest Group, and the Scientific Director for Bio2RDF, an open source project to build a
vast network of Linked Data for the Life Sciences. Dr. Dumontier is involved in a number of international community efforts
for knowledge integration, including the DataFAIRport, Force11, and the Monarch Initiative, a cross-species phenotype
integration effort.
Hosted by: Dr. Michael Gold
Monday May 11, 2015
11:00am to 12:00pm, LSC3